Inspired by the Wizards of the Coasts D&D Stream of Annihilation over the weekend I wanted to create a jungle inspired adventure card.

I am also currently studying for an exam for my MSc in Epidemiology so I have diseases on the brain. Combine the two and you get a coastal city beset by a mysterious illness that the players have to solve. Will they rise to the challenge and become amateur epidemiologists or will they succumb to insanity and hysteria?

Congratulations Egg Embry, you won the contest! Thank you to everyone who entered. I’ll definitely be holding another one of these. I’ll take pictures of the place-cards and share them before I mail them and I’ll make sure to get details about all the characters this time!

So I’ve decided to jump on the “hold a contest for self-promotion” bandwagon and hold a contest of my own. I will make a set of character place cards for the winner’s party (including the dungeon master!) written in my calligraphy and send it to the winner, anywhere in the world!

All you have to do is follow/share my Twitter/Google+/Instagram accounts! You will get one entry in the draw for following an account, and another for sharing the post. Make sure to tag your party to get them to enter, because if any of them win, you all win!

The final member of my brother’s Dungeons and Dragon’s party. Now that I am done these I really should ask him what each character actually is. Also, don’t forget that tomorrow I’ll be posting details about a contest I’ll be running to win your very own player character cards! (I apologize about the terrible picture quality, I had already mailed my brother the placecards before I realized this picture didn’t turn out too great).

Killua Nailo is perfectly average. She is of average height, average weight, average build. She has brown hair and brown eyes and you wouldn’t look at her twice if you saw her walking down the street, which is exactly what she wants. Some say she was born unassuming, others say she she made a sacrifice to a dark god to make herself forgettable. However, everyone can agree that she is a deadly assassin who you dare not cross.

So I’ve written out another player character car for my brother’s Dungeons and Dragons game. Tomorrow I’ll post the last player character card and then on Friday I’ll post all of them together along with contest details to win your very own character place cards for your party!

I still have no idea what race/class combo are attached to any of the names. So in the same fashion as the other two, I present Persephone Silverthorn, the random NPC.

Persophone Silverthorn’s rotund build and silk clothing belies her humble upbringing. Orphaned as a by her human mother after her elven father returned to his homeland, Persophone only knew the cold embrace of despair and hunger as a child. As a young girl she was caught caught stealing sweetbread by Gaston, the town’s finest pastry chef. Seeing how Persephone’s rags hung off her frail frame he took her in and put her to work in the kitchen. As the years went on she began to take on more and more responsibility from Gaston until the day his heart failed and she assumed full ownership. Now you can find her taking in all disadvantaged youths who come to her door looking for food or a shelter over their head, as long as they are willing to do some work in the kitchens in return.

Here is another place card for a member of the party that my brother DMs for (the first was Nestor Flynhorn). Because I still don’t know anything about the party I’m going to be turning him into a Random NPC using random tables. This time I’ll use the character generator from the game Zweihander to inspire this random NPC.

Thurwal Ironfist picked his name to inspire fear into the hearts of his enemies…at least those who only know him by name. This young smuggler with a doll-like complexion is the furthers from menacing a human can look. Inspired by stories of heroes from his childhood Thurwal took up the mantle of adventurer in his early teens. It was not a wise choice; he lost his hand to a ravenous gnoll. Now he makes a career from smuggling and is determined to become the best damn smuggler there is.

Here is another piece I did a while ago. It is the companion to this piece that shows what I use for monster miniatures in my games. I like using these mini-meeples because they are both genre and character agnostic. All the player has to do is select the colour that they most associated with their character and voila! They have their miniature.

Ideally I want to get myself some DnDeeples, but unfortunately they are only sold in quantities used in Lords of Waterdeep (25 of each plus 2 extra of each type) and I only need 1 or 2 of each. If anyone has any extra I’d be more than happy to trade some custom calligraphy placecards for your party for 1 or 2 of each type of DnDeeple!

This past weekend I went to the Ottawa Comiccon and it was a ton of fun. I picked up a bunch of cool dice 1) because I like dice, and 2) because I love introducing random elements into my games.

One of the dice I found was this awesome random weather dice. Anytime my players are outside adventuring I’m going to roll the weather dice and that’ll be the weather for the day. It has the bonus of being a real physical object that I can place on the map as a visual reminder to the players of the weather.

Random weather!

The weather will also have in game effect. For example if it’s foggy visibility will be reduced, heavy rain might make ranged attacks more difficult, etc. Here is what I am thinking:

Here is a piece of rpg calligraphy that I did about a year ago. It shows what I use for monster miniatures in my games. I really like using the simple wooden cube to represent monsters because 1) it allows for me to really describe the monster without getting hung up on what the model looks like; and 2) they can represent anything. I need goblins? Break out the green cubes. Cultists? Time to grab the red ones!

I also really like using the larger monster meeples to represent bigger, badder, monsters because they are 1) bigger than the mini meeples I use to represent the player characters; and 2) the cool factor.

So I’ve been pretty busy with family and work obligations the next couple of posts are probably going to be older maps that I’ve made. I’ll start off with the crypt.

This crypt sits at the center of a massive cemetery. Ulric the gravedigger tells tales of mysterious robed figures who enter the crypt on the new moon, however, he says he tries to follow them in only to find the crypt empty. Everyone disregards his stories as the ravings of a drunkard.